Zucchini Are Rampant

It begins. You see to the left a picture of the first of many zucchini that have already been born and, within a day or two, will be ripe for eating. I counted a half dozen that I could recognize as zucchini, with many more blossoms heralding future zukes. Prepare your doorsteps, folks; "Leave a Zucchini on Your Neighbor's Doorstep Day" is coming sooner than usual this year! (Note: The official "Leave a Zucchini on Your Neighbor's Doorstep Day is--I think--August 8 each year.)

In addition to the zucchini, my Ireland Creek Annie beans are the first to sport blossoms, so it won't be long now before the soup beans will be coming on. As my loyal readers may recall, I planted several different kinds of soup beans in addition to green beans. I've never harvested soup beans before (Mexican bean beetles and neglect took last year's attempt), so it will be interesting to see how much of a pain it is. And yes, I see the bug in the picture, but I am happy to report it is merely a cricket, the soul of a deceased Chinese emperor come to visit my humble garden.

Tomorrow I will need to transfer my tomato and pepper seedlings into bigger pots. They are a bit too small for the garden yet, but need more room for rooting. Here's a look at the seedlings. The tomatoes are looking a bit spindly on the left. The pepper plants are looking quite healthy in the back, and the oregano seedlings are coming on strong!

Yesterday I planted green onions, okra, and cilantro/coriander, and mammoth sunflower seeds directly into the garden and lightly mulched with grass clippings. It's probably too late in the season to be planting these foods, but what the heck, every one of my gardens is an experiment of some sort. The whole planting season has been late due to the three-month-long April showers. If they don't take, I can always adjust next year.

Creative Gardening Tools: Newspaper as Mulch

Do you have newspapers piled high in a box or bin somewhere in your house or garage that you'd like to get rid of? Here's a tip: instead of sending it off to recycling, shred it and use it as mulch in your garden or around your flowers and shrubs. You'll want to then top it off with grass clippings, hay, chipped tree mulch, or something similar (otherwise, the newspaper will just blow away and look like hell), but you'll gain lots of benefits from using shredded newspaper as an underblanket. I've used grass clippings--shown in the picture--to cover up the newspaper.

[Note to self: Next time, pick a wind-less day for mulching. The shredded newspaper won't blow all over the yard and I won't get grass clippings in my mouth.]

Using shredded newspaper not only gives you a use for those newspapers that might instead clutter up the landfill, but it also works as compost for the soil, helps retain moisture around your plants, and prevents weeds from taking over. Newspapers are safe for mulching since the newspaper industry has switched over to soy-based inks.

Shredded newspaper mulch doesn't stop all weeds; let me be clear about that. But it significantly reduces the number of them that will sneak through, particularly if you lay the mulch down thickly. If you want extra weed protection without chemicals, tear up some food-grade or corrugated cardboard and lay that down first, then the shredded newspaper, and finally, whatever you've chosen as your topside mulch. Ultimately, the cardboard and newspaper will all break down and become part of the soil that the little beasties feed on; additionally, you won't have the leachate that you would get if you lay down plastic. (Plastic is bad, very bad, and should never be used around food.)

Be Afraid...Be Very Afraid

In one day, the zucchini plant I took pictures of last night has decided to blossom. The blossom in the foreground will open tomorrow, and quite possibly the one in the background as well. The beginning of the Day of the Zucchini (a la Day of the Triffids) is here! Beware! If you see zucchini plants wandering the streets...cover your eyes and run!

On the bug front, I still see no sign of the Japanese Beetles in my garden--they have decided that they prefer copulating in my decorative trees. I mentioned yesterday how they eat holes in the leaves, creating a kind of lace-like effect. The picture here shows an example of the damage they have wrought in just one day. We have not yet had the opportunity to douse their fiery passions with a soapy water mixture, and today, I'm wondering whether that's a good idea. If we make the tree an unwelcome marriage bed for them, they may decide to take up residence in my garden. But they are also too far up and out on the tree for me to be able to reach most of them in order to scoop them into a bowl of soapy water. Does anyone have advice for me that includes neither chemicals nor the admonition to join them in their insect frenzy? Please?

Bugs Really Bug Me

I looked out the window this evening after working in the garden. I thought I saw black spots, so I closed my eyes to rest them, then reopened them. Black spots. I shook my head (I'm not sure what I hoped to accomplish by that) and then looked again. Black spots. So then I looked more closely, and realized that the leaves of the trees that vine around the upper deck were covered with black spots. And the black spots were moving...and glinting in the sun.

Crap. I know that glint. It's Japanese Beetle time.

I've had run-ins with these buggers before. They are voracious leaf- and fruit-eaters. They nearly destroyed my okra crop a couple of years ago. When they eat, they reduce the leaves of whatever plant they attack to a fine lace and leave other leaves looking like they have been burned by fire. Then they lay their eggs underground, where the grubs overwinter so they can come back and destroy my plants again the next year.

So you can imagine my distress when I saw them, especially with my garden doing so well. I downloaded a couple of documents about getting rid of them. Apparently traps don't work well. My best bet, according to the literature, is to go out in the early morning when they are sluggish and knock them off into a bowl of soapy water. It's too late this year to plant flowers and other vegetation that do not attract them...by the time they matured, the beetles' migration/mating season will be over. I don't want to apply chemicals, so other than the soapy water trick, there's not much I can do. I'll spend time knocking them off tomorrow, and David will spray the trees down with a soapy water mixture. We'll hope that's sufficient. So far, I haven't seen them in the garden, and hopefully they don't like what I've planted so far. Maybe the onions will keep them away.

And trust me, these bugs are "gettin' jiggy wit' it," and in my trees, no less, and in plain sight, where my children (read: kitties) can see them in their pornographic glory!

First Harvest of the Season

After hubby and I returned home from seeing Topol in Fiddler on the Roof in Chicago, I toured the garden to see how my plants were doing. I was ecstatic to see that six Sun Sugar tomatoes were ripe and ready to pick! After taking a picture, David and I promptly ate them. Tomatoes don't last long around here, especially the Sun Sugar ones. They are naturally sweet and also great salad tomatoes.

I staked the rest of the heirloom tomato plants now that they were all standing tall and straight (and yes, Michelle, even the tiny ones are doing well)! I'm happy to say I haven't lost a single tomato plant so far.

I am also happy to see that the Beefsteak tomato plants are preparing to fruit--they have blossoms galore! For example, on this one plant, in just this one cluster, I have seven blossoms open and four more preparing to open! All of the original hort sale tomato plants have blossoms, so it won't be long before I will be able to report many more tomatoes.

The zucchini are doing very well also. The plants are huge and green with very large leaves (the stakes you see between the rows are bean plants. Maybe not the best planting idea, but we'll see how it goes). I didn't lose any of these plants, either, and I'm beginning to feel the first tremors of fear that I may be overrun with more zucchini than I can cook, freeze, and give away. I decided to take a peek inside one of the plants to see what the blossom status is. OMG. The core of the plant is nothing BUT blossoms! And this is only the beginning, and only one plant. So prepare yourselves, dear readers, to receive zucchini in the near future.



I also got down on hands and knees--not an easy task, mind you--and weeded the beans and onions. With all the rain we've had, I had a lot of weeds encroaching that needed to be pulled. Luckily many of them came up easily by the roots. Tomorrow I will dig newspaper out of our recycle bin and shred it and mulch between the rows to keep the weeds down. So far, the grass clippings around each plant are doing a really good job of keeping the weeds away from the plant itself, so with the newspaper trick and grass clippings on top of that, I should be in good shape.

It's Too Darn Hot...

...to play in the dirt today. I am very sad.

Tomatoes are Fruiting!

It continues to rain almost daily, although we were supposed to get pop-up showers today and didn't. It was nearly 100 degrees today, and if the humidity wasn't 100 percent, well, it was close enough to call it. Within just 5 seconds of walking outside, my head started to sweat, and a collection of sweat-drinking flying things swarmed me. I was able to get some pictures taken of the garden, however, and plants are loving this wet weather!

The once-neglected Sun Sugar tomato plants are now looking tremendously healthy, and have produced their first fruits/ It was all I could do to keep myself from picking them early and savoring their sweet, summery taste. But I refrained in order to let them ripen. They should be ready in a day or two. The heirloom tomato plants, which were a bit wilty after I planted them a few days ago, are now standing up straight! Depending upon the heat tomorrow, I may try to get out and stake them; if it's too hot and humid (which is predicted for tomorrow), I may wait a day or so. They are small enough and straight enough that I don't need to worry for now.

The zucchini plants have filled out nicely, and I expect to see blossoms within a day or two. People, I fear I will be overrun with zucchini! Of course, given how many plants I installed in the garden, that comes as no surprise to me. I will be grating and freezing a lot this summer, I suspect! The onion and shallot shoots continue to grow, as well, so I should have a lot of those come fall.

The cucumbers are now getting their squash-like leaves, and it won't be long before they'll send out their tendrils to grab on to the dirt. My goal is to try to train them up the fence. We'll see how that goes.

The bean plants are gaining strength and will do better as the zucchini grows a bit more and begins to shade them.

I can also see the Mammoth Dill, which isn't so mammoth right now, peeking its shoots above the grass clippings.

In the seedlings department, the Beefsteak tomatoes have risen, as well as a couple of pepper plants and some of the oregano and basil.

Just writing about all this food is making me hungry!